Closing doors.

There has been a situation in my life for a good amount of time that has required a lot of prayer. It kept me away from other things. Potentially better things, even. It was what it was. It was neither here nor there.

In not knowing how to deal with the situation, and wanting to do it in the most God-honoring way that I could, I have prayed continuously for a few years, “Tell me when it’s time to end this, Lord, however, I will remain if you want me to remain.”

Up until now I have had, apparently, the need to remain, because I hadn’t felt peace about anything else.

Have you ever been in that situation? Knowing that the Lord will change things, just not knowing when? And so you just stay put, because, no matter how undesirable the current circumstance, anything else wouldn’t be his will either.

It was one of those.

Let me back up, though. A few years ago my life had gone through a long spell of rocky roads (NOT the ice cream), and I had come to the end of myself, so to speak. I was becoming increasingly bitter. I was building walls thicker than I had before, and if I ever had trust issues, boy, I had them now. Plain and simple, I was wounded. And I was cold as ice.

When a situation opened up for me to transplant my life, on a different schedule than I had anticipated, I took it, feeling like the Lord wanted me to do it, even though I knew it would be not quite what I expected.

When everything I then found myself living in was new and unfamiliar I knew that there were two options facing me:

1.       I was going to become even more lost, or,

2.       I was going to be more found than I ever had been.

Fortunately for me, the latter was true.

I transplanted my life for what I thought was one reason (a very unexpected reason), and found myself completely caught off guard by God’s different agenda.

The first 4 months of the new life I met absolutely no one, apart from the great couple I was living with (who I had never met until the day I moved in and who I was just referred to by a secretary of a church I had never attended)—who by the way I will fondly refer to from here on out on this blog as Al and Ella. They are a wonderful couple, and they are lifesavers. More so than they will ever know (which is usually how lifesavers go, mind you).

Anyway. I knew no one.

But you want to know the funny part? I wasn’t lonely.

I found myself realizing that where I came from had so scarred me, had so changed my personality, that I would have been willing to change serious things about me just to please someone else, so to finally find myself where I had ZERO outside influence----well---it was exactly what I needed. It was just me and Jesus.

And Al and Ella.

And the dogs, Lucy and Ethel.

All living in this beautiful house.

Well, the dogs weren’t living in the house. They live outside. Because they are dogs.

And Jesus was restoring this chick.

It was crazy. I felt like a butterfly in a cocoon for the first time in my life. I would go to bed at night and wake up the next morning and literally know that I was not the same person I was when I had gone to bed the night before.

I was on a walk on day that fall and I very distinctly remember being all giddy because I could SEE changes in my being. It was like the ice on my heart was melting.

I was coming alive again. I said to a friend on the phone one night, “I feel like I am finally owning myself for the first time in my life,” to which she said back, “No, I don’t think you are owning yourself, I think you are finally letting Jesus own you. You are being owned for the first time.”
It was a beautiful thought.

While all of this was taking place I was still in the midst of the situation that made me transplant my life in the first place! It was as if I had two lives. There was the life that got me here on one hand, and then there was this metamorphosis taking place on the other. I had thought that the first situation was my reason for coming, but I soon realized that it was just a way God was using to get me out of a bad situation. If He hadn’t intervened, I fear I would have been lost forever.

Ok, so that is the history.

In the most recent months of this story I have been feeling the ripples start; like Jesus was starting something. Finally Jesus was moving in my life and soul in regards to the situation I had been praying about for so long. I had made my action plans and was at the point where I said, “God, I have no idea if this is what you want me to do. But I am going to do it. If you don’t want me to do it, then stop it. Please.” In that type of attitude I was walking forward. For the majority of this situation’s life cycle I had the mantra of “I will know what to do when I need to know,” and have had that kind of steady trust.

Most recently a friend challenged me to start praying specifically. I will admit that I can fall into the trap of just praying God’s will. That, of course, is a fabulous thing and surely I want God’s will, but it’s kind of like when you highlight in a book: If you highlight everything, nothing is really highlighted. If you pray for everything, you’re not really praying for anything. So I decided to get specific.

I was continuing to make my plans, and changed but one thing. I started to pray, “Lord, I am not even asking you to open doors elsewhere, I am just asking you to close doors here.”

I have been praying that for three weeks. Here and there something would happen and I would think, “Oh yeah, that seems like a closed door,” hoping that it wasn’t just me looking for one. But today, well, today I got my answer.

Let’s just put it this way: If the situation no longer exists, then I can no longer exist in that situation.

Without me manipulating anything, without me having to fret about what I was going to say or when I was going to say it or if I was going to become a traitor, all of the sudden, it just wasn’t there anymore.

And I was suddenly relieved.

And suddenly not bitter anymore.

There was my answer. I didn’t have to make the decision. I didn’t have to pray and labor for it. It just walked through the door.

And that door is now shut.

And THAT is an answer to prayer.

I can look back over the last few years, both lives I have lived here taken into consideration, and pretty soon I will not remember the monotony. I will not remember the stress. I will remember the answered prayers.

I won’t remember the situation he used to bring me here, I will remember how he changed me once I arrived.

I won’t remember those people who burned me, I will remember those who bandaged the wound.

I will continue to be strengthened by his faithfulness and how God ALWAYS does what he promises.

For so long my phrase had been, “I will know when I need to know,” and in God’s perfect, usually “late,” timing I found out that now is when I need to know. Not a day too soon and not an hour too late.

Sometimes God doesn’t tell you his answer, he just hands it to you.

But either way, his answer is the one I want.

So here is to God keeping is promises…..and closing doors.

And how epic that I just happened to snap this on my drive this morning; not able to see what's around the next bend.